Europe’s energy trap: from Nord Stream to Strait of Hormuz

Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

A major fuel and energy-security crisis is hitting Europe again. French President Emmanuel Macron has warned of a fresh oil shock and urged the European Union (EU) to take “emergency steps” as fuel shortages spread and global markets tighten.

In a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Macron points to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Middle Eastern energy infrastructure. He says global oil inventories have already fallen by over 500 million barrels. The Middle East supplies 36% of the EU’s jet fuel and 18% of its diesel imports, while 14% of French gas stations now face shortages or near-shortages.

Macron is extending fuel subsidies and urging Brussels to temporarily relax fuel-quality rules, allow more B10 diesel, delay methane-reporting requirements and consider joint diesel and jet-fuel purchases. The crisis is hitting consumers, transport and industry as power prices rise and winter concerns grow.

This is Europe’s second major geopolitical energy shock in five years. In December 2021 (before the Ukrainian war), soaring gas prices, declining European production and import dependence had already exposed the continent’s vulnerability. I argued then that Nord Stream 2 could have helped mitigate it by delivering relatively cheap Russian gas directly to Germany.

US opposition to the project reflected both geopolitical concerns and commercial interest in expanding (more expensive) American LNG exports.

Washington had long opposed deeper Russian-European energy interdependence. European governments subsequently adopted and institutionalized that path themselves.

Russian gas imports to the EU fell from 152 bcm in 2021 (45%) to 36 bcm in 2025 (12%), with remaining volumes now being phased out by European law.

The 2022 Nord Stream sabotage further ended the prospect of restoring German-Russian pipeline-gas cooperation, accelerating Europe’s shift toward US LNG and other suppliers, while questions over responsibility remain unresolved.

Europe did diversify: US LNG now supplies roughly 22% of European gas demand, up from under 5% in 2021.

Norway, the US and Kazakhstan became leading crude suppliers. Yet diversification does not mean independence: Europe basically replaced a concentrated pipeline system with a global network of LNG, maritime routes, refined products and distant chokepoints.

The Iran conflict has highlighted this vulnerability. In 2025, the Middle East supplied nearly 41% of Europe’s diesel imports, and those flows have since been heavily disrupted.

Freight costs have soared as shippers improvise workarounds around Oman. Qatar’s LNG output has been hit.

In this context, the US is now both a major supplier helping Europe manage the shortfall, and a main actor in the very conflict disrupting one of Europe’s key supply regions.

Europe remains, as it is, heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels and globally traded energy. The largest crude suppliers are now, as mentioned, the United States, Kazakhstan and Norway rather than the Gulf. Yet the Middle East matters disproportionately in such a crisis because of its weight in global flows and the Strait of Hormuz.

The point is that the European bloc’s growing reliance on LNG exposes it to disruptions in global energy markets, including those caused by conflicts and chokepoint disruptions far beyond Europe.

Energy security after all is not merely an environmental or economic question: it is a strategic-security issue.

Macron is effectively asking the EU to temporarily relax parts of its own regulatory architecture because supply has become more urgent than normal constraints.

Thus Europe is discovering, so to speak, that successive geopolitical decisions have replaced one form of dependence with another - leaving the continent exposed to a different set of external shocks.

Again, in 2021 I wrote that reducing reliance on Russian energy risked creating a new dependence on more expensive suppliers. Five years later, Europe is arguably less dependent on Russian gas - but increasingly exposed to globally traded LNG, imported oil and refined petroleum products.

From a European perspective, the US-Israeli war against Iran and the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz have clearly demonstrated the risks inherent in that new architecture.

Europe’s great paradox remains: dependence on Washington for security while the continent’s energy choices leave European consumers bearing the costs of American-led conflicts over which they have limited control. It is no wonder political tensions are rising ahead of elections.

To be clear, the current crisis does not necessarily prove that Washington deliberately engineered Europe’s predicament for its commercial gain. It does, however, show that US policies helped set the direction, European governments then institutionalized it, and the resulting energy system has left the continent vulnerable once again.

The costs of that vulnerability are now visible at French gas stations and across European industry - and the shock is likely to have significant economic and political consequences.